Friday 19 / April / 2024
Muscat: As part of KPMG’s initiative to analyse important tax developments and controversies through a fortnightly series of articles contributed to the Times of Oman; this week, we discuss the requirement of electronic filing of tax returns, which was introduced in Oman’s Income Tax law by a Royal Decree 2017/9 (RD) published in the Official Gazette on February 26.
This initiative, of moving from filing paper returns to electronic returns, is indeed, like several other amendments, a step forward in the Government’s overall commitment toward simplification of tax compliance procedures.However, being a new procedure, taxpayers and their advisors will need to ensure that they are conversant with the process of using the tax portal in order to comply with the amended filing requirements, which are effective immediately from the day following the date of publication of the Royal Decree on February 27.
It is important to note that the tax authority’s electronic portal is operational and taxpayers have started registering themselves for using the portal. The current year being the first year for electronic filing and due to the teething problems and operational issues faced by taxpayers in using the electronic portal, the tax authorities have granted flexibility to the taxpayers for filing the provisional return of income (PRI) for the tax year 2016 (the due date for which was March 31, 2017) either electronically or manually in paper format, to ensure that the filing deadline is not missed due to procedural issues.
However, the tax authorities expect that the Final Return of Income (FRI) for the tax year 2016 (the due date for which is June 30 this year) is filed electronically through the portal by all taxpayers. It remains to be seen whether the portal will be fully operational by then, or whether the tax authorities will give the same flexibility for manual filing of final returns, also giving consideration to the time required by businesses to get fully familiar with the portal.
Portal Login options
Log-in can be done to the portal via a public key infrastructure (PKI) activated ID card, PKI activated phone number or username/password obtained from tax authorities.
Portal Services
The portal is expected to be user friendly and will provide key services, such as allowing submission of tax payer details, tax exemption requests, tax objections, and withholding tax returns. Reminders will be sent on the e-mail registered by the taxpayer in the portal, for all the important due dates, such as PRI and FRI. Further, the portal is linked to the Ministry Of Commerce and Industry (MOCI) server allowing easier registration with tax authorities. The tax payer just needs to fill the commercial registration number, and the system will extract all the information from the MOCI server.
Furthermore, it is understood that the tax portal will generate the Tax Identification Number (TIN) automatically at the same time. The taxpayer should also be able to check the details of claims, penalties and tax payments due. However, it is imperative to note that only viewing rights (and not downloading rights) are expected to be provided to taxpayers.
To facilitate filing and compliance procedures to be undertaken by Omani businesses through their tax consultants, there is provision to grant access to the tax portal to such tax consultants in one of the following ways.
1. Direct Access to Tax Consultants
Taxpayers will need to file an application requesting that their tax consultant be granted portal access on their behalf, along with an authority letter in their favour (enabling them to collect the log-in details directly from the tax department). The tax department will provide login details (username/password) with prescribed validity (to be renewed on expiry).
2. Delegated Access to Tax Consultants/Advisors (by the taxpayer)
Taxpayers will need to activate a principal officer’s account on the tax portal (person appearing as principal officer in tax authorities records) and the taxpayer will be allowed to grant a limited “manager access” or “user access” to the tax consultant.
The portal may still not allow a few options, such as e-payment of taxes (directly to tax authorities bank account), download option for the taxpayers, filing of abeyance request and other applications that are expected to be addressed soon by the tax authorities and incorporated in the portal.
Once fully operational, the portal will go a long way in ensuring that taxpayers have easy and direct access to the tax department for all their compliance and correspondence requirements.
